


Nothing But Trouble

by glorious_spoon



Series: Hurt/Comfort Bingo 2018 [9]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pneumonia, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 08:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16783417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: Here’s the thing about ventilation shafts that any spacer will tell you: they’re twisty, cramped, and generally--at least on the kind of ships Yondu and his crew mostly frequent--home to all kinds of nasty little pests and parasites that hitched a ride on some shipping container or another and scurried off to breed little mutant pest babies in the darkness.*Peter gets sick after a job, and Yondu has to take care of him.





	Nothing But Trouble

**Author's Note:**

> For a Tumblr prompt by laylainalaska, who asked for Peter & Yondu, pneumonia. Also fills the 'pneumonia' square on my Hurt/Comfort Bingo square.
> 
> This takes place pre-canon; Peter is 14 or 15 here.

Here’s the thing about ventilation shafts that any spacer will tell you: they’re a goddamn pain in the ass to navigate. They’re mostly not built to be worked on internally; that’s what access ports are for. They’re twisty, cramped, and generally--at least on the kind of ships Yondu and his crew mostly frequent--home to all kinds of nasty little pests and parasites that hitched a ride on some shipping container or another and scurried off to breed little mutant pest babies in the darkness. Hell, some of the long-haul freighters have their own goddamn ecosystems up there. That’s half the reason for the filtration systems in the first place, not that anybody’s gonna tell the moneyed class that in so many words.

The other thing about ventilation shafts is that if you happen to have somebody on your crew who’s skinny and flexible and fearless enough--like, say, some mouthy Terran brat with more guts than sense--they’re the quickest and easiest way to circumvent most security measures. Not the really hardcore kind of shit, not the kind of tech that Nova Corps likes to use, but some too-big-for-his-britches drug smuggler with the score of a lifetime stashed in his hold? Yeah, that’ll get around his security just fine.

So when Quill pushes out the grating over a port on some quiet, little-used corner of the crew quarters and drops lightly to the floor with a sack slung over his shoulder, Yondu figures he can be forgiven for the burst of satisfied pride. He claps the boy on the shoulder, squeezing tight where his bony frame is just starting to give way to solid muscle. Kid’s growing up already. Seems like just yesterday he was a weedy little thing sniveling in the hold of the _Eclector_. “Look at who just earned himself a payday. This all of it?”

“Not even close,” Quill says. He’s slightly out of breath, but there’s a broad grin on his grimy face. His shaggy hair is matted with dust and there are shreds of grainy, electric-orange fungi caught in his eyelashes and the wispy moustache he’s been carefully cultivating for months. “There’s at least five more of ‘em.”

“Well, what are you waiting for, boy? We still got an hour until the shift change. Get a move on.”

He gives the kid a boost back up to the vent, and Quill goes without a word of protest, scrambling up into the cramped and smelly darkness with all the agility of a Iskarian monkey-snake. Yondu shoves the grate into place after him as his quick footsteps rattle away into silence, and only then allows himself to grin.

By the time this shift change rolls around, he and Quill and the loot are all long gone.

* * *

All told, it’s one of the cleanest jobs they’ve pulled in months. The handoff is like clockwork, the crew elated, and Yondu buys Quill a tall, smoking glass of blue liquor that’s just a few degrees shy of toxic to Terrans and doesn’t even hassle him too much when he tries out his moves on an A’askavarian bounty-hunter and almost gets shanked for his trouble.

In retrospect, he should have known it was too damn easy.

* * *

The first sign of it is a cough that won’t go away. That’s not necessarily anything to fuss about; Quill comes down with just about every bug that crosses his path, legacy of spending his formative years on an isolated rock in the back end of the galaxy. He usually throws them off quick, though, and this one seems to linger.

Linger, and get worse. A week in, the cough has moved from his throat to his chest, and there’s an unhealthy wheeze to it that leads even Horuz to thump the kid roughly on his back in the mess hall and ask, “What the hell, boy, you forget how to breathe?”

“Fuck off,” Quill gasps, but now that Yondu’s paying attention, he can see an unhealthy pallor in the boy’s face, the way his breath whistles on the inhale, coming way too fast. The way Quill hunches over the table after Horuz wanders off and picks at his food for another ten minutes before pitching most of down the disposal and wandering out into the service passage that’s a shortcut down to the storage locker where he sleeps. Even now, he usually avoids sleeping where the rest of the crew can get at him, especially if he’s feeling poorly.

Yondu sets his own fork down and follows.

He catches up to Quill halfway down the corridor, bent over nearly double next to a water reclaimer and coughing so hard his eyes are watering. It’s a wet, awful kind of cough, the kind that makes his chest quake, his face red and gasping like he can’t quite catch enough air in between. He doesn’t notice Yondu coming up behind him even though he’s making no effort to be silent--probably can’t even hear him after all the hacking he’s doing, but that doesn’t stop him from jumping about a mile in the air when Yondu settles a hand on his shoulder. Gentle, even, but Quill still spins like he’s expecting to get knocked down. Which is smart.

“I didn’t do anything!”

“Other than hack up your lungs all over my nice clean ship.” Quill doesn’t even bother pointing out the engine grease and dried blood smeared across the floor--possibly the remnant of a long-ago fistfight, possibly a murder, Yondu neither knows nor cares. Now that he’s up close, Quill looks terrible. His skin is blotchy and wan, his breath wheezing in his throat, his eyes red and leaking as he glares up at Yondu. “You sick, boy?”

“No, this is—” Quill breaks off for another coughing fit, one that bends him over like a tree in a strong wind until he’s got a hand braced against the curving wall. When he finally gets himself under control, he wipes his grimy sleeve across his face, spits a mouthful of bloody phlegm at the floor, and says, “This is totally normal for Terrans. What the hell do you think?”

“You been to the infirmary?”

“That blue shit Rayla always makes me drink tastes like donkey piss,” Quill says, which Yondu takes as a ‘no’. It’s encouraging that he’s still got enough spirit to be mouthy, but that still don’t keep him from slapping the boy upside the head for his lip. “Ow! What was that for?”

“Mouthin’ off. And spittin’ on my floor. You want me to make up a list of other reasons to kick your ass, I can probably do that too. Let’s go.”

Quill flinches when he hooks a hand under his shoulder to propel him forward, but he doesn’t make much of an effort to throw Yondu off, just stumbles along on clumsy, gangly legs. He’s started to stretch out in the past few months, putting on height almost as fast as the tailor can keep up, and it gives him a scrawny, unfinished kind of look. Still shorter than Yondu, although not by all that much these days, and it ain’t like he’s in much of a position to put up a fuss about getting hauled along like a sack of luggage.

He doesn’t try to mouth off anymore either, and that’s concerning. By the time they make it two levels down to the infirmary, he’s barely even stumbling along, most of his weight hanging off of Yondu, who finally gives in and slings an arm under the boy’s shoulders. That does the trick of keeping him upright, but it also means he’s close enough to hear Peter’s breath wheeze and rattle in his chest, which makes a rough frantic feeling that he refuses to identify rise up in his throat like he’s the one choking here.

The infirmary is huge and bright, marginally cleaner than the rest of the ship and well-stocked after their latest stop-off. More or less abandoned during chow time, but there ought to be a couple of medics still hanging around down here. Or at least there’d damn well better be if they don’t want to get an arrow through one of their less-essential parts. He drops Quill onto the nearest bed, watches him roll onto his side, wheezing, clutching at the thin mattress in a white-knuckled grip as he tries to drag air into his lungs.

At least the sound brings one of the medics along before he has to go haul one out at arrowpoint. A weedy youngish Krylorian, not someone Yondu recognizes on sight, but his eyes go huge when he sees them. “Cap’n!”

Yondu jerks his chin at Peter, who has finally stopped coughing and propped himself halfway up on his elbows. “Quill’s sick. Check ‘im.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Quill mumbles, letting his head drop back against the mattress.

“Next time get your stupid ass treated before you fall down on my ship, an’ I won’t have to,” Yondu says as as the medic approaches Quill with a caution that shows he’s entirely familiar with the potential risks of treating injured or ailing Ravagers.

Quill’s not a one to lash out even when he is feeling miserable, and he’s reasonably cooperative while the medic runs a scanner over him, peers into his eyes and mouth and nose, presses a patch against his chest to listen to the noises his lungs make. Bad noises, from the face he makes. From the quick furtive glance he shoots Yondu’s way as he peels the patch away.

“He ain’t dyin’, is he? Ain't got time to train another sneak-thief.”

“The air sacs in his lungs are inflamed,” the medic says carefully. Yondu doesn’t miss the way he takes a slow, deliberate step back when Peter starts coughing again. The noises the kid makes when he tries to suck air in between coughs are awful in a way that reminds him of things he usually chooses to forget, like the close, stinking darkness of the slave-pens and the press of terrified bodies squeezed together in quarantine when a wave of sickness swept through. The smell of death and fear and rotting corpses that used to be bunkmates chained up against him.

He shakes it off like a bad dream, steps forward to haul Quill up with a hand under his shoulder when it becomes obvious that he’s not gonna manage it himself. Quill’s hand lands on his arm, clinging to him briefly before letting go.

The coughing ain’t stopping. Yondu thumps him sharply on the back and feels another twist of that weird, frantic feeling when Quill flails at him weakly and still doesn’t stop fucking coughing. “So what’s that mean?”

“Pneu--pneumonia,” Quill manages in between coughs. He drags breath back into his body, hitches, then says, “Gonna fuckin’ puke on you if you don’t—” more coughing. “Don’t find me a pan.”

Before either Yondu or the medic can make a move, though, he’s heaving over the side of the bed. Not bringing much of anything up; he hasn’t eaten much in the past few days.

Yondu thumps him on the back again, doesn’t bother to dodge away. The smell of sick ain’t pleasant, but he’s smelled worse. And the kid is kind of--just a little bit--leaning against him, a warm sweaty weight through his Ravager leathers. No good reason to shove him off. “The hell do you know?”

“My mom had it. Cancer.” Quill coughs again, then heaves again, twisting like he’s deliberately aiming for Yondu’s boots. “Asshole.”

“Watch your mouth, boy, you ain’t too big to feed to the crew yet.” He looks back up at the medic. “Where’d he get it? And how d’you treat it?” And then, almost as an afterthought, “Is it contagious?” Last thing he needs is the rest of the crew coming down with some kind of Terran coughing sickness out here in the black with the nearest civilized outpost fifteen jumps away.

“It’s not a viral or bacterial strain, so it shouldn’t be contagious.” The medic shrugs, still at a cautiously safe distance, and adds, “Has he been exposed to any kind of fungus lately?”

“Still right here,” Quill mumbles against Yondu’s jacket. Yondu scruffs a hand through his sweaty hair, absently, but he’s thinking—

 _Shit._ The goddamn ventilation shafts. That bright orange fungus that had clung to Quill’s face and hair all the way back to the _Eclector_ , that had taken days to fully scrub off his skin. “Yeah. Week ago or so. Can you treat it?”

The medic looks relieved, either at a question he can answer or the lack of overt violence. “He’ll need antifungals. Bed rest, oxygen, the works. But he should be fine.”

“Don’ want bed rest,” Quill mumbles petulantly, but he still hasn’t pulled away. His shoulders quake as he starts coughing again.

“Good thing it ain’t your choice, then, ain’t it.” Yondu jerks his chin at the medic, who’s still staring at him like he’s grown a second head. Goddamn Quill is way too old to be clinging to him like a pouchling, but Yondu can’t quite make himself shove the kid off, either. Probably, he’ll start puking again if Yondu lets go of him, and that’s the last thing he needs to deal with right now. “You waiting on a gold-plated invitation? Get to it.”

The medic jumps, opens his mouth, then wisely shuts it and scurries away. Yondu can hear him digging through the supply cabinets. He looks down at the top of Quill’s sweaty, disheveled head. “You ain’t been nothing but trouble since I took you on, boy.”

“It’s—” Quill breaks off coughing again, but at least he doesn’t puke this time. “It’s called kidnapping, you old blue douchebag.”

“Same difference,” Yondu says, and eases the kid down onto the bed. Then sinks into the chair next to it, meeting Peter’s startled look with a flat stare that dares him to ask questions. He doesn’t. Smart little fucker. Smart little fucker got himself sick making the biggest score they’ve seen in months, so maybe Yondu owes him just a little bit of worry. “Next time you go crawling through them vents, we’ll have to get you some kinda mask. Can't be having this shit again.”

Peter wipes his streaming nose on his sleeve, then says, hoarse and bleary, “Can it be like a cool retractable one? With light-up eyes so I look like the Terminator?”

Whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. “We’ll see,” Yondu says, and kicks his feet up on the mattress, waiting for the medic to get back.

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found on Tumblr as [glorious-spoon](http://glorious-spoon.tumblr.com/). If you enjoyed this story, I'd love to hear from you!


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